What that’s about: 38 years ago today, Johnny Cash recorded his classic live album.
Bill Vallicella addresses the question “What good is philosophy?”, and gets in a well-aimed lick in the bargain:
It is good in that it conduces to intellectual humility, to an appreciation of our actual predicament in this life, which is one of profound ignorance concerning what would be most worth knowing if we could know it. The aporetic philosopher is a Socratic philosopher, one who knows what he knows and knows what he does not know. His is the docta ignorantia, the learned ignorance. The aporetic philosopher is a debunker of epistemic pretense. One sort of epistemic pretense is that of the positive scientists who, succumbing to the temptation to wax philosophical, overstep the bounds of their competence, proposing bogus solutions to philosophical problems, and making incoherent assertions. A good recent example would be Richard Dawkins with his nonsensical talk of “selfish genes.” (Debunked by David Stove in “Genetic Calvinism or Demons and Dawkins” in Darwinian Fairytales, Ashgate, 1995, pp. 118-136)
The NYT gets it wrong again:
Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958.
“Invented”???? They’ve been around for centuries. Fortunately, not all Western journalists are as clueless. Looks like it takes the Europeans (Reuters) to get the facts straight:
[Ando] was inspired to develop the world’s first instant noodle product after coming across a long line of people waiting to buy fresh “ramen” noodles from a black market stall during the food shortages after World War Two, Japanese media said.
But it takes a blogger to really understand why the story’s important:
With all due respect, it’s tragic that many non-Japanese know of ramen only as a salty freeze-dried noodle thing that is typically served in a styrofoam cup. A bowl of real ramen, however, is a delicious and subtle work of art which bears little resemblance to its instant counterpart (as the superb 1985 film Tampopo amply demonstrated).
For Austinites, I recommend the ramen at Origami Express at 2438 W Anderson Lane (across the street from the Walmart-to-be.)
David Chalmers has a new paper called “Ontological Anti-Realism” online. He starts by mapping the territory:
The basic question of ontology is “What exists?” The basic question of metaontology is: are there objective answers to the basic question of ontology? Here ontological realists say yes, and ontological antirealists say no.
…
An intermediate sort of lightweight realism has also developed, holding that while there are objective answers to ontological questions, these answers are somehow shallow or trivial, perhaps reflecting the structure of our concepts rather than the furniture of the world….These views contrast with what we might call the heavyweight realism of Fine, Sider, van Inwagen, and others, according to which answers to ontological questions are highly nontrivial, and reflect the ultimate furniture of the world.In the currently thriving field of first-order ontology, the most popular view is heavyweight realism, with the a minority of lightweight realists and antirealists. Outside the field of ontology, deflationary views are widespread, with many non-ontologists being skeptical of the heavyweight realism that has become common in the field.
I haven’t finished reading the paper, but it seems to me that it raises interesting questions when juxtaposed to Bill Vallicella’s post that I linked to above. (My quotation, by the way, distorts Bill’s intention in the interest of being cute. He’s actually defending a particular conception of philosophy: that all important philosophical questions are aporetic.) It makes one wonder where Bill’s position falls on Chalmers’ realism-antirealism continuum. From what I’ve read of his work, he argues strenously for heavyweight realist positions; I’m not quite sure how to reconcile that with his defense of aporetic philosophy.
Correction Department: I actually got this post uploaded at one minute after midnight. Therefore, my initial statement is erroneous. He recorded it 38 years ago yesterday.
Comments 1
Alan, I would certainly hope that philosophy continues its long tradition of not being good for anything. You know the little parable of the tree in the Chuang Tzu - but here is a variation of it:
“A (master) mechanic, called Shih, on his way to Khî, came to Khü-yüan, where he saw an oak-tree, which was used as the altar for the spirits of the land. It was so large that an ox standing behind it could not be seen. It measured a hundred spans round, and rose up eighty cubits on the hill before it threw out any branches, after which there were ten or so, from each of which a boat could be hollowed out. People came to see it in crowds as in a market place, but the mechanic did not look round at it, but held on his way without stopping. One of his workmen, however, looked long and admiringly at it, and then ran on to his master, and said to him, ‘Since I followed you with my axe and bill, I have never seen such a beautiful mass of timber as this. Why would you, Sir, not look round at it, but went on without stopping?’ ‘Have done,’ said Mr. Shih, ‘and do not speak about it. It is quite useless. A boat made from its wood would sink; a coffin or shell would quickly rot; an article of furniture would soon go to pieces; a door would be covered with the exuding sap; a pillar would be riddled by insects; the material of it is good for nothing, and hence it is that it has attained to so great an age.’
When Mr. Shih was returning, the altar-oak appeared to him in a dream, and said, ‘What other tree will you compare with me? Will you compare me to one of your ornamental trees? There are hawthorns, pear-trees, orange-trees, pummelo-trees, gourds and other low fruit-bearing plants. When their fruits are ripe, they are knocked down from them, and thrown among the dirt. The large branches are broken, and the smaller are torn away. So it is that their productive ability makes their lives bitter to them; they do not complete their natural term of existence, but come to a premature end in the middle of their time, bringing on themselves the destructive treatment which they ordinarily receive. It is so with all things. I have sought to discover how it was that I was so useless;– I had long done so, till (the effort) nearly caused my death; and now I have learned it:– it has been of the greatest use to me. Suppose that I had possessed useful properties, should I have become of the great size that I am? And moreover you and I are both things;– how should one thing thus pass its judgment on another? how is it that you a useless man know all this about me a useless tree?’ When Mr. Shih awoke, he kept thinking about his dream, but the workman said, ‘Being so taken with its uselessness, how is it that it yet acts here as the altar for the spirits of the land?’ ‘Be still,’ was the master’s reply, ‘and do not say a word. It simply happened to grow here; and thus those who do not know it do not speak ill of it as an evil thing. If it were not used as the altar, would it be in danger of being cut down? Moreover, the reason of its being preserved is different from that of the preservation of things generally; is not your explaining it from the sentiment which you have expressed wide of the mark?”
It is obvious to me that the good of philosophy is in striving to maximize, as much as possible, one’s uselessness. But Master Codesmith sir, do you not agree?
Posted 28 Jan 2007 at 7:12 pm ¶Post a Comment